Submitted by Jill Kerper Mora (not verified) on November 29, 2007 - 10:34.
I say amen to Duane Campbell's remarks about mandated teacher education (TE) assessments in California. TE programs throughout the state are struggling to implement burdensome systems of assessment that were conceptualized and encoded into law by legislators and bureaucrats who have no grasp on the realities of our programs and our teacher candidates. Under the name of Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA) our student teachers spend hours upon hours documenting, filming, and writing "reflections" on single lessons (called teaching events) that detract from their focus on becoming familiar with the curriculum, lesson planning, and interacting with and getting to know their master teachers and public school students. Then part-time and full time faculty spend hours upon hours reading and scoring these documents. This is maximally inefficient and ineffective way to assess student teachers' abilities because it is decontextualized from what really is happening (or has happened) in their real-time teaching and is heavily dependent on their writing skills rather than their actual teaching skills. The combined assessments of student teachers' master teachers and university supervisors who observe their growth in teaching skills over time are a much more valid and reliable evaluation of their performance as novice teachers.
In fact, research on the PACT support this concern. In describing the Teaching Event required in the PACT assessment system in an article in the Journal of Teacher Education, Pechoene & Chung (2006) indicate that there is a strong level of agreement between analytic scorings of the Teaching Event and holistic judgments by professionals as to whether the candidate should be granted a credential (.870 in the passing range of scores, .808 in the lower range of scores). In other words, holistic professional judgments correspond 80-87% of the time with Teaching Even scores. This means that in at least 13% of the cases, teacher educators’ professional judgment disagreed with judgments about whether or not student teachers’ met the criteria to earn a credential based on their performance on the Teaching Event alone. Consequently, some student teachers could be recommended for a credential on this basis of this assessment whose overall performance does not warrant it, and others may not be recommended whose actual classroom performance supports a positive judgment of their potential for being a good teacher.
The jury is still out as to whether the very labor-intensive and time-consuming TPA assessment system mandated in CA will actually produce better teachers or whether more potential and enrolled teacher candidates will find this system so onerous and burdensome as to negatively impact their decision to enter teaching and/or their completion of a teacher education program.
Dangers of Mandated Assessments
Submitted by Jill Kerper Mora (not verified) on November 29, 2007 - 10:34.
I say amen to Duane Campbell's remarks about mandated teacher education (TE) assessments in California. TE programs throughout the state are struggling to implement burdensome systems of assessment that were conceptualized and encoded into law by legislators and bureaucrats who have no grasp on the realities of our programs and our teacher candidates. Under the name of Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA) our student teachers spend hours upon hours documenting, filming, and writing "reflections" on single lessons (called teaching events) that detract from their focus on becoming familiar with the curriculum, lesson planning, and interacting with and getting to know their master teachers and public school students. Then part-time and full time faculty spend hours upon hours reading and scoring these documents. This is maximally inefficient and ineffective way to assess student teachers' abilities because it is decontextualized from what really is happening (or has happened) in their real-time teaching and is heavily dependent on their writing skills rather than their actual teaching skills. The combined assessments of student teachers' master teachers and university supervisors who observe their growth in teaching skills over time are a much more valid and reliable evaluation of their performance as novice teachers.
In fact, research on the PACT support this concern. In describing the Teaching Event required in the PACT assessment system in an article in the Journal of Teacher Education, Pechoene & Chung (2006) indicate that there is a strong level of agreement between analytic scorings of the Teaching Event and holistic judgments by professionals as to whether the candidate should be granted a credential (.870 in the passing range of scores, .808 in the lower range of scores). In other words, holistic professional judgments correspond 80-87% of the time with Teaching Even scores. This means that in at least 13% of the cases, teacher educators’ professional judgment disagreed with judgments about whether or not student teachers’ met the criteria to earn a credential based on their performance on the Teaching Event alone. Consequently, some student teachers could be recommended for a credential on this basis of this assessment whose overall performance does not warrant it, and others may not be recommended whose actual classroom performance supports a positive judgment of their potential for being a good teacher.
The jury is still out as to whether the very labor-intensive and time-consuming TPA assessment system mandated in CA will actually produce better teachers or whether more potential and enrolled teacher candidates will find this system so onerous and burdensome as to negatively impact their decision to enter teaching and/or their completion of a teacher education program.